An Innocent Encounter

Sadhna , Chandan , Rahul, Vikram , Madhavi, Chiranjeet ,Partho, Vikram...No these are not the friends I usually hang out with ,but would rather love to spend more time with.

Yet , i can say that i have made some wonderful  friends in a span of a mere 1 hour. They really know how to be happy, to smile effortlessly irrespective of the fact that they don’t enjoy the comforts of the modern life as we all do.

These are the names of the little fellows I had the chance of meeting this Monday along with my friend , Lakshay. We spotted these carefree tiny tots against the backdrop  of a construction site in Noida. Much to my relief, they were not made to work alongside the workers .But, I was really eager to know what was the reason of the amazing smiles on these faces?

So , we both got into the act of knowing our new friends by asking them a few basic questions like, “ kya naam hai” ? “Pura din kya karte ho”?, Going further into our conversation we came to know that some of them don’t know how old were they ? And they did not know how much of a difference basic   education would make to their lives. Yes, they were happy about all this, which is a sad thing to know.  

In the meantime, Lakshay managed to get some wonderful pictures capturing their innocent faces. This really got them excited with one of them asking, ”Uncle meri photo kheecho” which obviously irked my friend but neverthless we continued with our conversation.

And then joined in Pooja,Madhavi and Sadhna .We got the three of them to sit down and interviewed them for some time.

The Girl Child-

This part  remains the most interesting and thought provoking .In a world where the ability to dream is not an easy a virtue to find,we managed to get the most innocent and genuine answers from these two girls.

“ Hum Padhne nahin jaate”.

“Mujhe nahin pata main kitne saalon ki hun “

“ Main Doctor Banungi”

“ Main Police Banungi”

What are we trying to highlight here is that

-Inspite of all the chaos around their lives ,these kids want to study but really don’t know how to go about this aim?

-There are additional problems that should not be ignored. The lack of money for instance, the daily struggle their parents go through for the sake of survival. How do we tackle such issues ?

The least we can do is spend some more time with them and make them smile for some time.

The table below lists the names of these children with their ages .

                    Names                                         Age

Sadhna	10 years
Chandan	5  years
Rahul	7 years
Vikram	5 years
Madhavi	9 years
Chiranjeet	5 years
Partho	10 years
Vikram	11 years

Call for action- This whole episode will remain futile, if no further action is taken in this regard. So we urge all the volunteers to at least try and take the work forward by talking to these children and if possible look for avenues to get them enrolled in schools. And do help spread the message forward.

Compiled by-Ishan Mahajan and Lakshay Jethi

Ishan

Lakshay